Neal Boortz is a conservative talk show host in Atlanta. I’ve been listening to him for a long time. A long, long time.

One of Neal’s disclaimers for his show is that you should never take him for his word, without first confirming it first through your own investigation. In today’s internet world, that’s not hard to do, and it follows that this rule should be followed for just about anything you encounter.

Case in point, from Infowars and about a zillion other web sources:

National Weather Service Follows DHS In Huge Ammo Purchase

Hollow point bullets designed to cause maximum organ damage

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Why would the National Weather Service need to purchase large quantities of powerful ammo? That’s the question many are asking after the federal agency followed in the footsteps of the Department of Homeland Security in putting out a solicitation for 46,000 rounds of hollow point bullets.

Yes, good question, indeed. Why would they?

So, I did some looking on my own. First, I read the solicitation as it appears on the Federal purchasing web site.  Here’s what I read:

Inside Delivery to locations below:
NED:
8,000 rounds to: Ross Lane DOC, NOAA, NMFS, OLE, NED 130 Oak Street, Suite 5, Ellsworth, ME, 04605

First, I thought about calling Ross Lane and asking him what was up. I’d be willing to bet Paul Joseph Johnson didn’t.

But, Instead, I put the address listed into Google Maps. Well, well.

First, it looks like this is a brand new building, as it was under construction at the time the Google Street View car went by. But, it also looks like this office is a shared government office, including the National Marine Fisheries (always usefull in putting down domestic insurrection) and the US Customs Service. 

I would be willing to bet that the 200 paper targets and 8,000 rounds of ammunition are for practice by ICE agents. Not for the Weather Service. Conspiracy solved.

So, why does the government buy things under the National Weather Service name? Beats me. My guess is the Customs Service needed ammo, put in their request, and somebody sent it to the Commerce Department (makes sense?), and when they entered the delivery address into Skynet, it used the largest agency at that address to deliver it to.

Of course, it’s also possible that they did it to get a good laugh out of the conspiracy fans, which, if it were true, would actually make me feel a little better about our government.